ATHABASCA — The Athabasca food bank's coverage area just keeps growing, and with it the potential for future growth of the facility itself, which will in turn allow it to help even more people seeking a helping hand.
Having recently taken the Slave Lake region into its coverage area, the food bank, operated by Athabasca Good Samaritan Ministries Association, now covers a population of more than 106,000, making it among the largest in the province, rivalling operators in Alberta's biggest cities. Of note, AGSMA also runs with zero paid staff.
The area they covered now runs from Slave Lake south to Fawcett, southeast to Clyde, and back up to Smith and east of Lac La Biche but anyone from across the province can access their services.
“It has increased a lot since the fall,” said AGSMA secretary Lois Uchityl. “And we haven’t counted since the increase, but it was 2,400 individual families. Per month we serve 500, so they don’t all come at once.”
This November saw the largest increase of users – with the group spending on average $111,000 every six months for food.
“It's been just a real onslaught of new registrations with families with very intense needs,” she said. "Like some needing furniture and household things, as well as food.”
Household items, furniture, and clothing are all items that are always needed and people are encouraged to drop off, or take, during regular daytime hours.
“There's times when kids get brought into Athabasca with a spouse that has been beaten or abused and they just get plunked with nothing,” said AGSMA president Kerri Daniels. “You walk into their place and they're sleeping on the floor with no blankets on this kind of floor (cement); no blanket and they're pregnant.”
With the help of Farm Credit Corporation, the non-profit was able to purchase gardening equipment – a small tractor and attachments to help with the three huge gardens they take care of on the property.
“We have 35 regular volunteers that are volunteers all the time. Some of our volunteers have been here for 27 years; they've been here for the whole time,” said Uchytil.
When the mission moved northeast of town 27 years ago it turned into a blessing in disguise. They can have gardens now; a huge root cellar; and people will come just to hang out under the trees on nice days.
“People that don’t even come to the food bank, they just come to sit here,” Uchytil said.
They can also help with lodging for a night or two in cases where people get stranded, and there are big plans in the works to start a pod program for the unhoused population, similar to the one recently started in Edson.
“We have a hope in the future, not only to expand, but to have pods for the homeless,” said Uchytil.
That program is down the road though, for now the facility needs to expand the intake building, where everything is dropped off and sorted then re-packaged and placed into hampers to be distributed.
“We need to raise $150,000 to $160,000,” said Daniels, noting Alberta Pacific Forest Industries (Al-Pac) has already donated $25,000 to the project. The remainder will come from matching funds from the government.
AGSMA has a hygiene program as well as a school snack program through the Breakfast Club of Canada and provides the morning snacks of granola bars and fruit for 10 schools in the Athabasca region.
“We always have to buy toothbrushes,” said Uchytil. “I think our budget last year was $60,000 just for hygiene products.”
Right now, the group is looking for holiday items so kids can have something for Christmas and will take donations, and if you choose to donate cash, you can specify which program you prefer it goes toward whether that be food hampers, hygiene, school snacks or victim services.
